Anyways, I found one called "Marathon & Beyond," a bi-monthly publication with feature stories about great marathon runners and organizers. I was reading a story about Billy Mills, an American Indian runner who is the only American to ever win the Gold Medal in the 10,000 meters in the Olympics. Only three American have ever won the Marathon in the Olympics, and Mills 9th place finish in the Marathon just days after winning the Gold stands as the highest spot an American born athlete has finish in the Marathon.
So Mills is currently the spokesperson for Running Strong for American Indian Youth, and in the interview I was reading he mentioned this film. I thought I should try and find it and watch it quickly before I forgot about it. I was not thrilled with a few things, and I'll get to them. First off the cast is mainly Robby Benson [Mills], Pat Hingle his coach [Commissioner James Gordon from the late 80's Batman series], Jeff McCracken [his roommate], and Graham Greene [his brother Eddie from the reservation]. Greene is the most familiar face in the film, and has been the American Indian in a number of great films.
So the film starts with him running a high school race, demolishing the competition in front of College scouts, much like the opening of Prefontaine. We then spend the majority of the film at his career at the University of Kansas. I didn't really like that the focus was on him being a Native American and dealing with racism. The director seemed to lack direction on if this was going to be a Lifetime type movie about persecution, or a film about running for runners. The film ends with his Olympic race, a scene I would have liked to see repeated more with some memorable college races, but a good scene nonetheless.
An interesting thing about the interview I read was talking about his achievements as a marathon runner, a portion of his career completely ignored in the film, and one that he admitted that he was embarrassed about. At the time he thought 9th place was a huge failure, and didn't even mention the event once, including the Olympic Trials. It is only now, almost 30 years after this film was made, and 50 years after the race itself that he is able to see how good 9th place really was.
There should be more movies about runners, and less about boxers!
Vote: 6/10
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086220/
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